HEALTH & WELLNESS

What Is COVAX And Why Does It Matter For Getting Vaccines To Developing Nations?

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

What Is COVAX And Why Does It Matter For Getting Vaccines To Developing Nations?

There is a global effort to distribute vaccines to poorer countries, but some of the world’s largest countries, including the U.S., Russia and China, do not intend to support the effort. That lack of backing could have devastating consequences for accessing a COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S. and many poor countries around the world. That is because the U.S. will not have access to vaccines secured by the initiative, called COVAX. Also, COVAX may lack the funding it needs to help poor countries control their epidemics, enabling the virus to continue to circle the globe. I am an ethicist at Binghamton University and am interested in COVAX because I work on global health and justice. What is the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) Facility? COVAX, formally known as The COVID-19 Vaccines Glo...

Your child’s vaccines: What you need to know about catching up during the COVID-19 pandemic

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

Your child’s vaccines: What you need to know about catching up during the COVID-19 pandemic

This spring, after stay-at-home orders were announced and schools shut down across the nation, many families stopped going to their pediatrician. As a result, kids have fallen behind on important childhood vaccinations. Vaccination rates declined starkly after mid-March, with up to 60% reductions in some areas of the country. Nationwide, vaccination rates dropped by 22% among Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program recipients under 2. Now that kids are coming back to pediatricians like me, many parents have questions about catching up. Why is it a problem that my child is behind on vaccines? Vaccines protect your child from serious communicable diseases including brain infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections and, in the case of the HPV and hepatitis B vaccines, even some t...

Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing

Pregnancy is stressful, to say the least, but COVID-19 brings new challenges to parents of newborns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified pregnant women as a vulnerable population. If infected, they are more likely to be hospitalized and require ventilation and their risk of preterm birth goes up. Economists predict that the U.S. may have at least 500,000 fewer births because of the pandemic. Deciding not to become pregnant during a pandemic is understandable, particularly in the U.S., as it is one of five countries worldwide and the only country classified as high-income by the World Bank, that does not mandate paid maternity leave for non-federally employed workers. As scholars who study prenatal and postnatal stress, maternal nutrition and the brain developmen...

Keeping coronavirus vaccines at subzero temperatures during distribution will be hard, but likely key to ending pandemic

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Keeping coronavirus vaccines at subzero temperatures during distribution will be hard, but likely key to ending pandemic

Just like a fresh piece of fish, vaccines are highly perishable products and must be kept at very cold, specific temperatures. The majority of COVID-19 vaccines under development – like the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines – are new RNA-based vaccines. If they get too warm or too cold they spoil. And, just like fish, a spoiled vaccine must be thrown away. So how do companies and public health agencies get vaccines to the people who need them? The answer is something called the vaccine cold chain – a supply chain that can keep vaccines in tightly controlled temperatures from the moment they are made to the moment that they are administered to a person. Ultimately, hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. and billions globally are going to need a coronavirus vaccine – and potentially two dos...

Video: Who should get a COVID-19 vaccine first?

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS, VIDEO REELS

Video: Who should get a COVID-19 vaccine first?

A committee of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is readying a report with recommendations for equitable distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine. In this Q&A, bioethicist Dr. Nicole Hassoun of Binghamton University breaks down the elements in the recently published draft report from the committee and explains the key questions around vaccine distribution. Why is there a need for guidelines on how to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine? It’s clear that there won’t be enough vaccines for everybody initially. It just takes a long time to get 300 million doses of vaccine made, and if we’re looking at November as a potential date for a new vaccine, then people start thinking about, “Well, what are we going to do when there’s not enough?” And that’s where this proposal and o...

How a new way of parsing COVID-19 data began to show the breadth of health gaps between Blacks and whites

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

How a new way of parsing COVID-19 data began to show the breadth of health gaps between Blacks and whites

Physicians and public health experts know that older adults are more susceptible to the flu than those in other age groups. We also know the health of Black Americans is worse than that of almost all other groups for not only flu, but for chronic conditions and cancer. These are two examples of health disparities, or health gaps – when demographic groups show differences in disease severity. As we analyze the latest data from the COVID-19 pandemic, a more complete picture on infections, hospitalizations and death rates has emerged, along with new conversations about health disparities. The COVID data underscore what social scientists, epidemiologists and other public health researchers have long said: It is not enough to look at a lump sum of data about any health issue, including COVID-1...

Big pharma’s safety pledge isn’t enough to build public confidence in COVID-19 vaccine – here’s what will

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Big pharma’s safety pledge isn’t enough to build public confidence in COVID-19 vaccine – here’s what will

Americans are increasingly concerned that regulators and manufacturers will rush a vaccine to market without an adequate review. That prompted nine vaccine front-runners, including Pfizer and Merck, to promise to abide by clinical and ethical standards in an effort to increase the public’s confidence in any vaccine that ultimately comes to market. As a scholar of law, public health and bioethics, I have extensively studied vaccine policy, as well as the laws and regulations governing human subject research and FDA-regulated medical products. In my view, the pledge is little more than a public relations strategy, with companies simply reaffirming that they’ll follow FDA guidelines and standard scientific practices. While I doubt the biotech pledge will do much to increase public confiden...

What’s in your medicine may surprise you – a call for greater transparency about inactive ingredients

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

What’s in your medicine may surprise you – a call for greater transparency about inactive ingredients

There are many more ingredients in every pill you take than what is listed on the bottle label. These other ingredients, which are combined with the therapeutic one, are often sourced from around the world before landing in your medicine cabinet and are not always benign. Earlier this year, the U.S. Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, which requires manufacturers to report real or potential drug shortages to the FDA. Manufacturers are now required to report disruptions in the manufacturing of an active pharmaceutical ingredient – the part of the medicine that produces the intended therapeutic benefit. But the CARES Act doesn’t include excipients - the “inactive” ingredients that make up the bulk of a final medicine. It also doesn’t include the materials...

Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Coronavirus is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40

How deadly is SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19? And what are the risks of death for people of different ages and demographics? These have been hard numbers to calculate during this pandemic. To calculate the true death rate – more accurately called the infection–fatality ratio (IFR) – you would simply divide the total number of coronavirus deaths by the total number of infections. The problem is that with so many asymptomatic cases and limited testing for much of the pandemic, finding the true number of infections has been very difficult. The easiest way to calculate more accurate infection and death rates is to perform random testing. I am a professor of health policy and management. In April, in partnership with the Indiana State Department of Health, I led a team of researc...

Halting the Oxford vaccine trial doesn’t mean it’s not safe – it shows they’re following the right process

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

Halting the Oxford vaccine trial doesn’t mean it’s not safe – it shows they’re following the right process

Only days after the federal government announced a A$1.7 billion vaccine deal to roll out COVID-19 vaccines to Australians in 2021, one of the two candidates has halted its phase 3 trials after a participant became ill. The AZD1222 vaccine, considered one of the frontrunners in the global race for a COVID-19 vaccine, was developed by the University of Oxford and has been undergoing testing with British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Melbourne-based biotechnology company CSL has committed to producing and supplying more than 30 million doses of the vaccine to Australians if it’s found to be safe and effective. But this pause in the trials doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not safe. Rather, it indicates the testing is progressing as it should, with due consideration of safety. Wh...